Welcome to Roses & Thorns. All books receive honest reviews, regardless of our sources. We are no longer accepting submissions. While the blog will remain live, I cannot continue reviewing books. My own writing is suffering from keeping up with two blogs. I will post my last review on May 29, 2017. Thank you Rose and Donna for your help, authors for the (mostly) great reading, and readers for following us.

Roses & Thorns

Thursday, April 30, 2015

By virtue of
her profession as a midwife, Tabitha Eckles is the keeper of many secrets: the
names of fathers of illegitimate children, the level of love and harmony within
many a marriage, and now the identity of a man who may have caused his wife's
death. Dominick Cherrett is a man with his own secret to keep: namely, what he,
a British nobleman, is doing on American soil working as a bondsman in the home
of Mayor Kendall, a Southern gentleman with his eye on a higher office. By
chance one morning before the dawn has broken, Tabitha and Dominick cross paths
on a misty beachhead, leading them on a twisted path through kidnappings, death
threats, public disgrace, and…love? Can Tabitha trust Dominick? What might he
be hiding? And can either of them find true love in a world that seems set
against them? With stirring writing that puts readers directly into the story,
Lady in the Mist expertly explores themes of identity, misperception, and
love's discovery.

Donna's Review:

Lately,
I have a knack for picking up an author’s first book. It’s not on purpose, I
assure you. It’s just a quirk of fate.

Lady in the Mist is the first work of
Laurie Alice Eakes, and it is the first of her trilogy titled The Midwives.

Overall,
the book was a likeable read. The characters of Tabitha Eckles and Dominick
Cherrett are endearing. I liked the fact that while Tabitha really wanted to
marry and have children, she was devoted to midwifery and her role in the
community. I liked the time period, just prior to the War of 1812. The
plot pacing is well done and moves along.

However,
the whole of it, characters, plotting, and prose, was not well focused. At
times I had to reread to understand not only what a character said, but where
the plot was going. While the external goals are clear, the characters seem to
have several issues internally they are dealing with. Tightening these elements
by focusing on one or two specific goals would have made the book not only more
enjoyable but would have driven the plotting forward in a clearer way.

I
also had trouble picturing Dominick Cherrett as an Englishman. The name
sounded French to me, and I am pretty sure the English, after the Reformation,
did not name their boys Dominick as it smacks of Catholicism. There was also
not enough build up to the relationship between Dominick and Tabitha. All of a
sudden, Dominick is in love with Tabitha. She seems to love him from the
start.

This
is a Christian historical romance, so readers should be aware of that. At
times, the religious angle was lengthy and the ideas, again, were not clear.
Long internal dialogues in fiction between a character and God in which
they suddenly have an ephiphany of sorts almost always turn me off. It is not
realistic except in a few cases. No specific church or denomination was
ever mentioned. Dominick, of course, would have been Anglican having been an
Englishmen, but nothing was ever mentioned of Tabitha’s church denomination.
This would have created a huge conflict and should have been explored, or at
the very least, explained as being a non-issue. If she was Episcoplian (the
American counterpart by this point in time of Anglicanism), that should have
been mentioned as well.

I
did, very much, like the ending, especially the way in which the story issues
were finally resolved.

Three Roses for this one, because there is enough good going on to encourage me to
pick up another book in the series, or even another by Eakes.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Following
his highly acclaimed dramatization of the Odyssey, Simon Armitage here takes on
the fate of Troy, bringing Homer’s Iliad to life with refreshing imaginative
vision. In the final days of the Trojan War, the Trojans and the Greeks are
caught in a bitter stalemate. Exhausted and desperate after ten years of
warfare, gods and men battle among themselves for the glory of recognition and
a hand in victory. Cleverly intertwining the Iliad and the Aeneid, Armitage
poetically narrates the tale of Troy to its dire end, evoking a world plagued
by deceit, conflict, and a deadly predilection for pride and envy. As with the
Odyssey, Armitage reveals the echoes of ancient myth in our contemporary
war-torn landscape, and reinvigorates the classic epics with adventure,
passion, and, surprisingly, Shakespearean wit.

Review:

Simon
Armitage’s The Story of the Iliad is a
dramatic retelling of Homer’s epic and the last days of Troy. It is an
enriching read for its transforming qualities from classic moments to
contemporary wisdoms. It is easy to read, written in play format. I especially
appreciate the insight it gives to the main characters of the Iliad and it’s ability to enliven them
for me. While I still consider Homer’s Iliad
one of the greatest reads and not to be missed, I can recommend Armitage’s book
as an interesting and enjoyable supplement.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Joe
Robertson’s life never panned out. In college, he was a top draft pick until
his knee blew-out in the NCAA Championship game on what he claimed, was a cheap
shot by Drew Waters. Choosing a second career in construction, he clawed up the
ranks, becoming the top Civil Project Manager in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
But that didn’t last. A scandal broke out; he was accused of offering bribes to
state inspectors. The allegations were never proven; the damage was done. The
only job he could obtain was a foreman’s position. But that wouldn’t last.

The
only saving grace is his wife Julie, until she's involved in a horrific traffic
accident that would launch them into a macabre dance of, betrayal, sex, murder
and redemption.

WARNING!
This book contains strong language and adult, erotic situations. Not
recommended for ages under twenty-one.

Review by Rochelle Weber:

Cracking Up did not engage me at all. A book
needs likeable people, or at least people with whom I can identify in order for
me to get hooked into it. I also need believable situations, and finally,
decent grammar. There is an editor listed on Amazon, but apparently she never
learned that possessives are spelled with apostrophes, because not a single one
included an apostrophe in the entire book. She also apparently never learned
the difference between then and than. There was only one time a comparative was
spelled “than”; the rest were all spelled “then.” That drove me nuts! Even the
blurb has a superfluous comma. “This book contains strong language and adult,
erotic situations.” There should not be a comma
between the words “adult” and “erotic.”

To
the plot. Joe is a whiny ne’er-do-well. When he blows out his knee, he drops
out of college and gets a job in construction. Yeah, he works his way up, but
when a scandal occurs, he doesn’t fight it; he quits, becomes a foreman and
blows that job, too. When his wife is in a horrific accident, instead of being worried
about her because he loves her, he’s worried about how soon she can get back to
work. He finally gets a job, but has to work with a corrupt co-worker, who
frames him for the problems on the project they oversee together. Instead of
keeping track of the shortfalls and problems that result from his co-worker’s
interference, Joe drinks and starts frequenting a local strip club. Of course
he gets fired yet again, and gets angry when his wife, Julie, confronts him
about the evidence of his lies and infidelity.

I’m
not terribly fond of either erotica or BDSM, but if you’re going to write about
it, do some research and get it right. I have friends who live that lifestyle,
and before they initiate a new person into it, they discuss it with them. They
talk about what the person likes, or thinks s/he might like; they establish
parameters; and they establish a “safe word.” If, in the course of the play,
the submissive person feels s/he is experiencing too much pain or is being
injured, there is a word s/he can say and the dominator/trix will stop
immediately. When Joe’s wife, Julie, gets involved with her chiropractor and
his nurse, they make wonderful love to her. Then, without warning, they start
calling her vile names, spanking her, having extremely rough sex, and twisting
her breasts until they’re horribly bruised. That’s not “play;” it’s rape. Any
real dom will tell you so. I was amazed they didn’t put her back into a
wheel-chair, considering her injuries.

Part
of me didn’t blame Joe for the solution he came up with, considering his state
of mind by the end of the book. But I didn’t like him from the beginning, so I
didn’t have much sympathy for him by the end.

I
imagine there are 18 year-olds out there who could read Cracking Up,
but I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone at any age who is thinking of dabbling
in BDSM play. J. J. Reinhardt doesn’t know enough about the subject to write
such scenes. Before you try it, find someone who can explain how to play
safely, without raping your partner.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest of the Great American Novels, yet its length
and esoteric subject matter create an aura of difficulty that too often keeps
readers at bay. Fortunately, one unabashed fan wants passionately to give
Melville’s masterpiece the broad contemporary audience it deserves. In his
National Book Award-winning bestseller, In
the Heart of the Sea, Nathaniel Philbrick captivatingly unpacked the story
of the wreck of the whale ship Essex, the real-life incident that inspired
Melville to write Moby-Dick. Now, he
sets his sights on the fiction itself, offering a cabin master’s tour of a
spellbinding novel rich with adventure and history. Philbrick skillfully
navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable
characters—finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time and,
indeed, to all times. A perfect match between author and subject, Why Read Moby-Dick? gives us a renewed
appreciation of both Melville and the proud seaman’s town of Nantucket that Philbrick
himself calls home. Like Alain de Botton’s How
Proust Can Change Your Life, this remarkable little book will start
conversations, inspire arguments, and, best of all, bring a new wave of readers
to a classic tale waiting to be discovered anew.

Review:

The Melville humor, especially in his
daring move to name a sperm whale “Moby-Dick,” is illustrated but faintly by
Philbrick in his non-fictional explanation on why one should read Moby-Dick. However, Philbrick is a
master at moving the soul to want such a reading for its descriptive
magnificence and its depth of moral muscling. Using excerpts from the novel, he
guides his reader to the heart of Ahab’s conflict with the great white whale through
Melville’s grand ability to deliver reality on every page and achieve
perspective within the tumult of the moment. If you have never read Melville’s Moby-Dick, you will find your intellect
challenged with a great desire to do so; if you have read this distinguished
novel in past-times, you will find your heart at peace with knowing the musings
behind this great American literary classic. It will be well worth the read.